


Surviving Day By Day

by metaphasia



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Lian Yu Island, But Only The Second Time, F/M, Gen, Post-Season/Series 01, Survivor AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:15:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24217252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metaphasia/pseuds/metaphasia
Summary: Felicity is a genius; she has yet to meet the person she can't outwit. Oliver has endured; he has yet to meet the person he can't outlast. They'll just have to figure out the whole "outplay" part as they go along.Welcome to Survivor!
Relationships: Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak
Comments: 54
Kudos: 92





	1. The Best Worst Idea

**Author's Note:**

> I keep thinking, as I sit here posting this, this is the most insane story I have ever written. It started as an absurd hypothetical, “But what if Oliver Queen had to compete on Survivor?”, and just spiraled from there. I would like to thank everyone in the Olicity discord for their support and encouragement in writing this nonsense, because this is all their fault. Special shoutouts to [allimarie_xf](/users/allimarie_xf) and [cfcureton](/users/cfcureton) for their assistance with brainstorming, beta reading, and just generally letting me bounce ideas off of them.

Felicity knew.

If she was being honest with herself, she had known when Oliver first came down into the Foundry's basement the morning of the day before, a look of pure defeat on his face. Despite all the good they had accomplished in their work stopping Merlyn's insane plan, he had still managed to feel nothing positive. Digg, for all that he was perceptive to an unnatural degree sometimes, hadn't noticed it somehow, assuming it was just weariness from their fight. But Felicity could barely take her eyes off of his face the whole time she was stitching up his wounds. She had seen it. She had hoped it was only a temporary thing, that he would rebound. They had all gone home in the early morning light, and taken the next day off to rest.

But now, when she opened her front door and saw Oliver standing there, thirty six hours after she had seen him last, with that defeat still in his eyes, and a bottle of Lafite Rothschild in his hand, she knew, and she couldn't deny it any longer.

Felicity stepped back from the door, walking back over towards her kitchen to put some distance between her and Oliver. There was nothing she wanted more than to go to him, hug him and throttle him at the same time and never let go, but she knew if she did, he would run.

“What's this?” Felicity asked him as he entered her apartment, shutting the door behind him.

“I realized that -” Oliver started to speak, but Felicity cut him off almost immediately.

“I know what it is, Oliver,” she said, fighting to keep her voice level. “This is you, what, paying your debts? Making amends? Going on a grand apology and goodbye tour? You're getting ready to leave.” Felicity couldn't help herself, the words slipped out of her mouth, her voice becoming more angry as she went. “Where did I rank? First one you're saying goodbye to? Last one? Somewhere in the middle?”

Oliver winced at her words, and Felicity almost regretted them before remembering what he was planning to do.

“Are you just going to slip out in the middle of the night?” she asked him. “Is this the last time I'm ever going to see you?” Despite how angry she had been initially, she couldn't help the pain and anguish she felt slip into her voice.

“Felicity -” Oliver started, and his voice cracked on her name, his fingers rubbing together frantically. His eyes blinkered shut, and he continued. “No. I wasn't going to leave quite yet.”

“When then,” Felicity asked him, crossing her arms over her chest, her voice stretched as taut as she was feeling. “When,” she asked again, this time her voice finding steadiness.

“After Tommy's funeral,” Oliver said, whatever resolve he had left leaving him.

“Where are you even going to go?” Felicity asked, not able to focus on the fact that she only had a week left with him. “You spent the last five years on a deserted island, what are you -” and as the words left her mouth, she saw the slightest wince cross his face. If she were anyone else, she might not have noticed it, but she knew Oliver better than anyone else knew him, had spent more time with him than she had with anyone else in years, and despite his iron control and poker face from hell, she could still read him. “Seriously?!” she all but shouted at him. “You're planning on going back to that- that- _hellhole_? Why? What could you possibly be thinking going back there?”

“Felicity,” Oliver said, a slight growl entering his voice that she tried to ignore for many reasons. “I am only good at one thing. Surviving. I thought I could help people, but I can't. The death tally is already up to over three hundred, and it was only two days ago. Who knows how many more will turn up dead? I failed this city.” With those final words, his voice turned dark, the voice she recognized from inside her ear every night.

Felicity recoiled as if struck. “ _We_ failed, Oliver. Because you said we were partners, so if you failed this city, I did too.” She dropped her arms to her side, and, at long last, started to move towards him, just a step for now. “But the thing is, we didn't fail. I could give you a three hour lecture on harmonic resonance of wave patterns, but the short version is that disabling the second generator? It didn't halve the effects of the earthquake, it would have been exponentially worse if they had both gone off. If there hadn't been a call to evacuate the Glades when there was, the body count would have been so much higher. And if no one had intervened, Malcolm Merlyn would have been able to escape this city and start all over again, since the SWAT couldn't stop him. We did that. Your mother made her confession because you convinced her that your life, and Thea's, weren't more valuable than all those people. You and Diggle took Merlyn down. Detective Lance and I stopped the second generator.”

Felicity gradually continued walking towards Oliver as she spoke, seeing that her words were having some effect on him. “We may not have been able to save everyone, but we certainly didn't fail.”

“We didn't win either,” Oliver countered.

Felicity sighed. “Just. You already said you were staying until Tommy's funeral. Just give me until then. Let me try to find a way to convince you, or to find another option.”

“Felicity,” Oliver breathed out. “I can't stay. Every time I look around, all I can see is the people I failed, the destruction I couldn't prevent. Being alone, on a deserted island, is just easier. I can't stay.”

“Promise me, Oliver,” she said, her voice not cracking only by the barest thread of will. “Promise me you'll give me until then.”

“I promise Felicity,” he said, and held the wine bottle out in front of him, pressing it into her arms. Felicity let him do so, let him turn around and vanish into the night. She knew that there wasn't anything more she could say then to convince him, but she had accomplished more than she had thought she could.

Felicity knew she was going to lose Oliver if she didn't find a way to get through to him.

Felicity _knew_.

\---

Felicity was drunk. It wasn't the first time she was hacking while drunk, and it almost certainly wouldn't be the last. She hadn't touched the wine Oliver had brought her though. She had felt as if, had she drank it, she would be admitting defeat, that she would never see him again after her week was over.

So, instead, after he had left, she had carefully placed it in a safe place and broken out the cheap stuff, getting herself sloshed. She had been desperate, frantically thinking of anything she could possibly say to Oliver to convince him to stay. It was the most desperate she had ever been – well, no, the most desperate was when he was bleeding out in her backseat. But this was certainly not far behind.

His words just kept rattling through her head. _I am only good at one thing. Surviving._ Halfway through the first bottle, she admitted to herself that it wasn't just the good they were doing for the city, that she needed him to not leave because she was already developing feelings for him. _I can't stay._ Somewhere around the start of bottle number two she had flipped the television on to drown out her thoughts from racing in the same circles over and over again. And that was when she had gotten her terrible idea. _Being alone, on a deserted island, is just easier._ It almost certainly wouldn't work, but she was desperate, and, admittedly more than a little drunk.

Surprisingly, the television network had had better encryption than some federal agencies she had hacked. But, the information she was looking for, email addresses and application forms and intake paperwork, wasn't the section that they were really trying to protect, it wasn't unreleased movies and shows, millions in digital assets. On the other side of things, she worked for Queen Consolidated, in the IT department; setting up email accounts was already part of her job, it required almost no effort to make a new one in Oliver's name that was a throwaway, routed through to her own personal accounts. And from the many nights in the Foundry, she knew all of Oliver's medical records and information. He had drilled some of it into her brain himself, in case she ever had to perform some life saving procedure on him.

Finally, her work complete, she pushed back from her laptop, and, too exhausted emotionally, physically, and too drunk to make it to bed, stumbled over to her couch and collapsed on it.

\---

The next morning, Felicity woke up, bleary eyed, with one of the worst hangovers in her life. She stumbled off of the couch, and, in reflex, shut her computer down before heading to make herself coffee. She had barely opened her eyes, the light pounding on her head, and had failed to see the email she had written to the executive producers of _Survivor_.

\---

Three days after Oliver's nighttime visit to her apartment ( _Phrasing_ , Felicity scolded herself in her mind), Felicity was still no closer to figuring out how to stop Oliver from going to Lian Yu. She had spent every moment she could with him. She had tried reason, she had tried guilt, she had tried his sense of duty. None of it was working. She still hadn't told Digg his plan, still holding onto the hope that she could stop him. Now she was back in her office at QC, trying to assess what damage had been done during the earthquake and get the office back to some semblance of normalcy. But her mind was a million miles away - just under 6,000 she corrected herself, as she had retasked several satellites that nobody was really using anyway to get better eyes on the island just in case, and had memorized it's coordinates.

All of a sudden, her email pinged with a new alert, a message from outside the company. She hadn't been expecting it, the only people who contacted her were internal staff. Skimming over the header of the email, her eyes widened. This, this might be just what she needed. Barely taking the time to dash out a message to her boss, letting him know she had to leave the office for the afternoon, she locked her system and made her way to the elevator. She didn't stop until she reached her car, pausing, as she always did now, to take in the sight of the few drops of blood that remained in her backseat that just wouldn't quite come out when she had cleaned her car, reminding herself that her time with Oliver and helping people was real.

She buzzed Oliver's phone as she pulled out of the parking garage, confirming he was still at his house, where he always seemed to be nowadays. It took her less than half an hour to reach the manor, partly because of how few cars were on the road with the recent disaster, and partly because of how fast she was speeding. Keying in the access code, she drove up to the front door, parking her car in front of it, not bothering to drive over to their garage. She didn't waste any time on closing her car door, just sprinted for the entrance, throwing it open and leaving it that way as she called out Oliver's name.

She saw him start to descend the ridiculous double staircase they had to the second floor, and ran over to meet him on the landing halfway up. “I found it,” she told him, breathlessly.

It was the first time she had stopped moving, had slowed down since she first got the email. Out of breath, she paused for a moment, and Oliver reached out his hand to rest on her shoulder. His gesture was meant in support, to brace her from her crazed dash, but it still sent butterflies dancing in her stomach.

“Found what?” Oliver asked, his voice suddenly intent.

“You said you wanted to go back to Lian Yu, because you couldn't stay here, because it would be easier to process, and because you were really good at survival, right?” Felicity asked him rhetorically, her breath coming back to her. Oliver groaned at her persistence. “What if it was only temporary?”

At that question, his eyes flickered over to meet hers, and she pressed on while he was processing. “I don't want you going to Lian Yu because it's dangerous, and completely isolated, and too far away, and just not a good place for you, specifically, to be in given your history with it, but,” and Felicity paused for breath mid ramble. “But what if there was another option? A deserted island you could go to to process, that wasn't quite as remote, that I could keep an eye on you at in case anything went wrong, where there would be a few people, but no one you know, no one who would ask you questions?”

Oliver's eyes flicked back and forth processing her words, looking for the trap in her proposal. “I – I guess, Felicity?”

“Good,” she said, her lips hooking up into a predatory smile. She pulled out her cell phone, showing him the email sitting on it. “Because you just got accepted to be on the latest season of Survivor.”

\---

They were sitting in the kitchen a few minutes later, Oliver having barely spoken as he thought over her words. Felicity knew it was an insane proposal, that there was almost no chance that Oliver would accept it, but she had to try. This may have been the most important conversation in her life, because she had a shot, a genuine shot, at stopping Oliver from running away, from leaving Starling again, forever this time. She had gradually regained some of her memories from the night Oliver had come to confront her on the drive over, and had therefore been able to answer his questions about how she had applied on his behalf. She had passed her phone over to him to look at as he sat at the island, one hand rubbing back and forth on his forehead, the other sitting by his side. Felicity stood on the far side of the island from him, a few steps back from it. She knew from long experience that pushing Oliver only made him push back, and, when he was in this sort of mindset, would lead to him storming off, unwilling to change his mind. It was incredibly hard, but she had to remain silent until he spoke, or she would scare him off.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity to her, he looked up at her, and she breathed out a sigh of relief. He was _in_ , she could see it. Oh, he would make her work for it, but she knew his face, knew that he was willing to consider it, that she could convince him, that she could get him to agree.

“What would I have to do,” Oliver asked.

“Nothing,” Felicity breathed out. “Just call them and tell them you're in. I sent them all the info they needed already, all you have to do is call to confirm and you're in.” Felicity saw him hesitate again, and she pressed on. “I get it, that you need time to process, that you need isolation, and this is a way to get it. There will still be people around, but they won't bother you with questions if you don't want to answer them. And there will be cameras every three _feet_ , so I will be able to keep eyes on you, and I won't have to worry. And it's only for like a month, so there will be time for you to process, come to terms with things, and maybe come back to Starling after it's over, if you're ready. Or we can figure something else out then.”

Oliver sighed, standing up, picking up her phone and dialing the number that was highlighted on it. Felicity watched his fingers on his other hand idly rub against each other as he did.

“This is Oliver Queen,” she heard him speak, and she pantomimed at him to put it on speakerphone. He did so, and she listened in, sticking her hands behind her back, crossing her fingers that nothing would go wrong.

“Hello Oliver,” she heard a voice echo across the room. “We were surprised to get your email, but we're super excited to have you on board. You're still interested in playing?”

“Yes,” Oliver said, and Felicity rolled her eyes at his monosyllabic response.

“Excellent!” the voice said. “We're starting filming pretty much right away, you're prepared to fly out immediately?”

“I have a funeral to attend in two days, after that I'm all yours,” he said. She could hear the old Ollie playboy voice start to creep into his words. Every time he dealt with people that he didn't know personally, that expected the old him, it would start to filter in, the mask coming up reflexively.

“That's perfect, we can arrange a flight out the next day and be right on schedule,” the voice said, excitement in the words. Felicity's eyes turned to flint at his insensitive words, and she was about to say something when there was a scuffling sound over the line, and another voice cut in. “Also, our most sincere condolences for your loss, Mr. Queen.”

“Yes, so sorry for your loss,” the first voice cut back in, before continuing as if upset at the interruption. “We got all your paperwork, and you're all set to go. The only thing we still need from you is the name of your partner.”

“Partner?” Oliver asked, his eyes popping up to meet Felicity's own widening eyes, and she shook her head in confusion at their unexpected question.

“Yes, didn't you see that part in the email?” the voice asked, and Felicity scrambled for the phone, trying to bring the email up while he was still talking. “This season is all about relationships, you have to bring a family member with you.”

“Does it have to be family?” Oliver asked, Ollie voice in full swing, his eyes searching back and forth frantically. “As you may be aware, I'm running a little short.”

“No, a girlfriend or loved one is fine,” the voice answered back quickly.

Oliver's eyes finished searching, and Felicity felt it, looking up from her search of the phone to find him staring at her.

“My partner is Felicity Smoak,” he said, and Felicity felt her eyes widen. Her head started to shake back and forth in denial under his unflinching stare at her, but only a moment before she realized she had no choice. If she didn't go along with this, Oliver would head straight to Lian Yu. It only took a moment to process it for her, and she bowed her head, and nodded in acceptance.

 _Frak_.


	2. Distractions

Digg didn't take it well.

“Wait, explain this to me again,” Digg said, as Felicity coded like her life depended on it in the Foundry's basement. They had swept away just enough of the debris from the Undertaking that Felicity had a clear workspace. Diggle had come with her since the Glades were still reeling from the after effects of the quake, more unsafe than ever, and Oliver wasn't ready to head back down to the lair yet. He leaned back against a support column, arms crossed over his chest. Sighing at his apparent inability to grasp what was going on, she stopped typing and swiveled her chair around to face him.

“Oliver and I are going on Survivor,” Felicity said, her voice slow and enunciation careful, to drive through just how silly she thought he was being. “So I need to make sure that this is all locked down, that our computer systems can handle being alone without my intervention for at least a month. And I need you to clean up the lair while we're gone, so that, when they reconstruct Verdant, no one figures out what we were all doing down here, and I don't step off the plane back from a deserted island to find Starling's finest waiting with handcuffs.”

“Why are you going on Survivor, though?” Digg asked, his voice still dumbfounded.

“Because Oliver needed a partner to go with him, because this is apparently the season where all the contestants come in pairs,” Felicity said, and rubbed her forehead in exasperation.

“And why is Oliver going on a reality TV show?” Digg asked her.

“Because I signed him up for it,” Felicity snapped, her patience finally wearing thin as Diggle asked the question she had known he was trying to ask all along. “Look, Digg, he was gonna – Oliver was going to go back to Lian Yu. _Lian Yu_. On some kind of guilt trip, with the trip being literal. I couldn't think of anything else to get him to calm down, so I had to offer him some kind of alternative, and, God help me, this is the best I could come up with.”

“Felicity, I don't think you thought this through,” Diggle told her, his arms finally uncrossing from his chest to shove his hands into his pockets. “Not only is Oliver going to be on a reality show, putting him square in front of cameras and viewing audiences, which weren't exactly the best place to put him before he went away for five years, let alone now, when he's keeping all of this secret,” Digg said, and walked over to sit on a table, putting himself closer to her height, letting out a breath before continuing. “Not only that, but you are going to have to be on a deserted island, in the wilderness, with no computers, no cell phones, no internet, no electricity of any kind. But the one thing you will have, is Oliver Queen. Who you will have to talk to, since neither of you will have anything else to do.”

“Oh God,” Felicity moaned, dropping her head into her hands.

Diggle chuckled at her, which made Felicity snap her face up to glare at him. The expression on her face must have been scarier than she had planned, since he suddenly looked panicked.

Felicity didn't say anything though, just spun back around and continued shutting down her systems, and setting up as much as she could to run remotely. “You'll move all the gear out,” Felicity said, deadpan. “And the servers. Do a couple appearances in the Hood so that no one suspects. But only the bare minimum, since you won't have any backup. You'll make sure Verdant gets rebuilt, or get someone to oversee it.”

She heard Digg murmur in agreement, apparently unwilling to push her wrath. Since he didn't find what she had told him especially onerous, she pushed on.

“And you'll look after Thea,” she said, and finally heard him moan in dismay. Her fingers came off the keyboard, latching onto her armrests, prepared to swivel back around and have an excuse to use her loud voice, before she heard him agree again.

She started typing urgently again.

Thea took it worse.

“What do you mean, you're leaving, Ollie,” she screeched, and Oliver winced. “You can't just _leave!_ ”

“Thea,” Oliver started, waiting for her to interrupt him yet again. When she didn't, he continued talking. “I need to get out of town for a while, I can't just stay here and see everything our family caused every day.”

“Where are you going to go, then, huh?” she asked him. “Skiing in Europe? Partying with supermodels in Belize?”

“A deserted island,” Oliver said, his voice flat, but laced with sarcasm. This conversation was already fraying his patience. Thea's eyes widened, her mouth dropping open in shock.

“I'm competing in Survivor,” he explained, and this time she managed to react.

“ _What_? You're – you're what? I must have misheard you, because it sounded like you said you were about to head off to another island, when you _just got back from one_.”

Thea could get incredibly shrill when she wanted to, when she got upset. It had been one of the qualities Oliver had found less endearing in her before the island, but that he had tolerated because of how young she was. Now, though, it just wore on his patience and self-control. Oliver started to raise one hand up towards his forehead to rub it in frustration, but aborted it halfway, dropping his hand back down to his side, his fingers rubbing together.

“Thea, I can't do it,” he said, his exasperation bleeding through.

“What do you mean, 'you can't do it',” she parroted back to him.

“I can't – Thea, I spent five years by myself,” Oliver changed tacks mid-sentence, trying to find an easier way to explain things to her, one that would get her to accept what he was doing with the minimum amount of further explanation and conversation with her. “I had to learn to deal with things by myself, and since I've been back, it has been nonstop dealing with other people. After everything that happened, I just,” and Oliver found the words Felicity had spoken before floating into his mind. He latched onto them, repeating what she had said to him, hoping it would be something Thea could accept. “ _Need some time to process_. Okay, Thea?”

“Ollie,” she said, her voice softening, and Oliver felt his face stiffen at her tone. “Okay. I guess I understand that. But you have to promise to come back here right after you finish, okay?”

Oliver nodded in agreement. “We'll come back right after we're done,” he promised. After all, even if he decided he needed to leave again, he would have to stop back to pick up a few things, and Felicity would be coming back to Starling anyway; a brief stop was something he could promise. He was glad at how Thea had handled things, since that conversation could have gone a lot worse.

“We?” she asked him, and his mind stopped processing on what he would have to do next and focused back on his sister. “What is this 'we' business?”

“Contestants need to have a partner,” Oliver explained, and shrugged. “I'm taking Felicity Smoak.”

“Who the _fuck_ is Felicity Smoak?” she yelled at him, her anger that had been derailed suddenly back in full force, and Oliver felt pain spike in his forehead.

Oliver sighed.

Tommy's funeral was poorly attended. Felicity realized early on that most people would want to be far away from the name Merlyn right then. The church was at best a quarter full, leaving her alone in the entire pew she sat down in halfway back. She had heard from Oliver some of the difficulties he had had in arranging everything – with both Tommy's parents dead, and how most of his more distant relatives were distancing themselves given that he had spent most of his life in the Queen household, Oliver was practically the only 'family' he had at the moment.

Despite her Jewish heritage, she was fairly familiar with most of the traditions involved; she had been to a few funerals for her friends.

Including Cooper.

That had been one of her worst days, seeing the man she had loved being buried. She was sure Oliver was feeling much the same way right now. As she sat, listening to the hymns being sung, it strengthened her resolve to be there for him, the way no one had been there for her.

She had only met Tommy on a handful of occasions, barely spoken to him at all, but she had seen how he shaped Oliver as a person, how his life had impacted Oliver, and it made her tear up, not just for how it had affected the person she loved, but for all his lost potential, for how he never had the chance to become the sort of man Oliver was – not in a 'raining arrows down in vengeance of the night' way, but the way Oliver had stepped up and become more mature, more responsible after his return. From what little she had learned of Tommy, he had only just reached that turning point in his own life.

Her tears up to that point were only a prelude to her true heartbreak when it came time to take his body out of the church, to the cemetery. Oliver was always going to be one of Tommy's pallbearers if he outlived him, but it was so much worse. The way people had avoided the funeral wasn't just limited to those paying their respects, but to those participating. They had not been able to find enough pallbearers, and Oliver was forced to carry one side of the casket by himself.

To her dying day, she knew she would never be able to forget the image of Oliver, bowed under the side of the casket, bent like the fallen caryatid. His face, twisted in agony and grief, made her suddenly think of one of her favorite movies:  _that is the face of ultimate suffering_ . Her own face was also a disaster, covered in tear splotches and makeup, she just knew, but she didn't try to hide it from Oliver; maybe, just maybe, he would be able to see a small candle flickering in the darkness of his grief if he knew he wasn't alone there. He only met her eyes for a moment, before he bowed his head, unable to maintain eye contact with her.

When she went out to her car to drive over to the cemetery, the hollowness she felt inside, the catharsis from letting it all out, firmed her resolve that Diggle was wrong, that she was on the right track, that going with Oliver to Survivor wasn't just the only choice, but the _right_ one. More than anything, he needed a friend, to not be alone now, and she would gladly suffer in the wilderness to be there for him. Digg was wrong; it wouldn't be difficult for her to go without her tech at all.

This would be the easiest thing in the world.

Felicity typed frantically, not having stopped since they got on the plane. All the hard work she had put in over the past week never felt like enough. It seemed as if there was always one more thing to do, one more task to complete, one more email to write, before she could relax. She had managed to shut down their servers in the foundry's basement, get them all prepped for a move, and made the boot up sequence simple enough that Digg would have basic functionality without her present. She had inventoried all their equipment, marking down everything that was damaged and would need replacing, so that Digg could do so while they were gone, considering a lot of the items they used had to be purchased discreetly. She had left him detailed written instructions for how all her programs worked, so that if he ran into any problems that required technical expertise, he would be able to deal with them, considering he wouldn't be able to call her for a consult.

In between all her vigilante work, she had given her time off notice at QC and gotten several upgrades and side projects complete, or at the very least documented, so that she wouldn't be leaving work in a lurch at this most delicate time. She had managed to complete the paperwork for the show for herself, which she hadn't done in her original drunken stupor. She had let her mother and few friends who would notice her absence know about where she was going to be. She had packed and repacked again and again for what she would bring with her.

But it was never enough, so she found herself unable to rest as they flew to the island they would be spending the next month or so on.

“Do you think we made a mistake?” she heard from the seat next to her, and looked up from her laptop for the first time in hours, blinking at the sudden lack of backlighting in her vision as she focused on Oliver's face. “Coming out on this show, was it a mistake?” he asked her again.

“No,” she answered instantly. “You were right, you needed to get away from Starling City. I was wrong to try to convince you to stay – this is clearly what you need. But you were wrong too, going to Lian Yu, alone, wouldn't have let you do the thinking you need, there's too much history there for you. I know that I know only the smallest fraction of what happened to you there,” and she rushed to place her hand on his shoulder as he looked about to speak. “And you don't have to tell me any of it, not if you don't want to, not if you're not ready, but I am here if you do. But even knowing the fraction that I do, I can see just how much it affected you, and not in a good way.” As she spoke, she moved her hand down to his chest, tracing over where she knew his scars were located, memorized from long hours spent staring at them while he worked out shirtless in the Foundry. It was a more intimate gesture than she had ever used with him; they were both extremely careful with their bodies, with how they moved and acted, always in control, and neither of them had crossed that sort of line before. His breath hitched at the action, and she continued on, dropping her hand down to squeeze his momentarily. “I think this is a happy medium for you, being able to get away and _think_ , without the pressure you would be under in Starling from everyone, but still not … isolated. Not alone.”

He was quiet for a moment, and she left her attention on him, waiting to see if he had anything else to say before she dove back into work.

“And for you?” Oliver asked her. “I didn't exactly give you much of a choice in this when I volunteered you, and I know enough about you to know this can't be your idea of fun or relaxation.”

“Hey, I had all the choice I needed,” she told him, a smile curving her lips up slightly. “It's my life, it's my choice, okay? You may have volunteered me, but I could have backed out if I wanted to. And I don't. You're right, this isn't my idea of fun, there's no ice cream or Netflix binges or comfy couches involved, but there's nowhere else I would rather be.”

Her words seemed to stun him slightly, and she reached out to squeeze his hand again. “Now, quiet. I really need to get some more work done, and I won't have any time after we land, so I'm against the clock here.”

He chuckled quietly, and leaned back in his seat. “No more distractions, I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I promise, they will get to the actual television show next chapter, okay?
> 
> This is the first time I'm ever posting a story chapter by chapter as I go rather than having the entire work written out on paper before putting the first chapter up. I am currently planning on a once a week posting schedule for this story, and will do the best that I can to maintain that.


	3. The Easiest Choice To Make (Day 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The season of Survivor portrayed in this story is not going to be a direct insert of Oliver and Felicity into an actual season of Survivor, but rather an entirely new storyline, with new contestants, tribes, and challenges. It is most directly inspired by the actual season 27 of Survivor, Blood vs Water (in which contestants were returning players each with a loved one accompanying them) which was the actual Survivor season filming during May-June 2013, when this story takes place, and will also be taking place in Palaui Island as did Blood vs Water. However, you can expect challenges and concepts from all across Survivor's history to be present.

Felicity bounced her leg up and down nervously as the speedboat drove them towards the island. Oliver reached out and placed his hand on her leg, stilling it and giving her a tight smile. She nodded her head back at him, and took a deep breath.

It was only a few moments later that she found her hands idly playing with the hem of her shirt, her nerves migrating north as the two of them finally headed towards their destination. She had asked Oliver for help picking out what to wear when they came out to the island, since she felt so completely out of her depths, and he had been surprisingly helpful, willing to talk to her at length about clothes, of all things. She had finally settled on a pair of capri cargo shorts, and a three quarter length sleeve baseball shirt in dark green. She had seen enough of the show to know that people always wound up on camera in their underwear at some point and had chosen the most conservative pair of panties and bra that she could find, in black so that they would hold up better with all the dirt and stains they were bound to pick up. She had her bathing suit and her hoodie in her pack, since she didn't need either right now. Oliver had also recommended a pair of boots for her, that she had gone out and splurged on, that were working pretty well, despite only a little bit of breaking in so far.

Oliver's hand reached out to still her motion once again, and she looked over at him. Suddenly, she realized his stillness wasn't calm, but anxiety. Oliver had never been one to show weakness in front of others, especially those he didn't know or trust.

And they were most definitely not alone. It was easy to know that there would be cameras everywhere when they actually started playing, and it was a lot harder to be face to face with what that meant. Oliver at least, had experience with that sort of constant paparazzi in your face attitude, but, on the other hand, that same experience wasn't exactly helping his anxiety either. She flipped her hand over from where it was underneath his, and intertwined their fingers before squeezing his hand reassuringly, letting him know that he wasn't alone. While she waited to see if he would react, she raked her eyes over him, taking in his wardrobe. He had also chosen cargo khakis, but his were pants where hers were shorts. He wore his usual long sleeved henley, and had a matching pair of boots to her own on his feet.

All of their preparations had led to this, Felicity thought, as the speedboat finally pulled up to the shore. Oliver hopped out, reaching a hand back to help her get off, and Felicity passed both their packs over before she grabbed his hand, using the momentum to swing herself out of the boat as well. They started the hike towards the meeting point the cameramen directed them to, and Felicity felt something in her stomach settle.

Game on.

\---

_A young blonde woman sits facing the camera in close up, only her top half in view. She is wearing a dark green shirt, with an industrial piercing visible in her right ear._

**Felicity Smoak, 24**

**IT Specialist**

“I'm not really the outdoors type,” she says, gesticulating around her at the omnipresent nature. “So just getting here, walking through the wilderness, I'm already out of my comfort zone.”

\---

"Gather round, everyone!" Jeff shouted out to the crowd, and Felicity and Oliver crowded in with the others into a semicircle in front of him. The cameramen were everywhere, mostly behind Jeff to get shots of their faces, but with a few behind them to record Jeff's face and for coverage in case one of them turned around. Felicity had gotten used to the mask that Oliver wore in public, the Ollie persona he slipped into as a disguise just the same as the hood and greasepaint he wore at night. She sometimes felt as if she was one of the only people to actually meet _Oliver_ , to see beneath all his disguises to the real him. It had always frustrated her a little, how he kept himself hidden away from the world, but she understood it better now. The nonstop intrusiveness of all the cameras filming them was helping her understand him more; she could certainly empathize with the Ollie who punched out a paparazzo before the island, a person she thought she would never have anything in common with.

"Welcome to the twenty seventh season of Survivor," Jeff continued his speech when everyone had settled down. "You're all aware of the first twist this season; every person competing on the show this year has a loved one they brought with them. Unlike previous seasons, this time, everyone is entering the show with an already built alliance." He paused for a moment, and, when Felicity heard some shuffling to her right, realized he was doing it so they could get reaction shots. Her eyes rolling probably wouldn't make the cut, but she couldn't help herself with how silly it all was.

"But that's not the only twist this season," Jeff said. "This year, you will all get the chance to pick which tribe you will be on, who you'll be working with to build shelter, find food, and competing with in challenges. Here's how it will work." His phrasing was strange to Felicity's ears until she placed it in a voice over on her TV set.

Felicity's mind was already racing ahead, looking at the three mats spread across the ground behind him, each with a wooden podium in front of them accented with paint in the same color holding a glass jar. Apparently, they would be divided into three tribes this year, instead of two, if her guess was correct; green, purple, and orange.

"In a moment, we'll pass around this bag of beans," Jeff said while picking up a large canvas bag from a fourth wooden podium, directly next to him. As he spoke, he reached inside his pocket to pull one out to show them, and she realized it wasn't an actual bean, more like a small pebble, just painted. "Each one has a number written on it. Once everyone has selected a bean, they will get to select which tribe they join, in numerical order, from one to eighteen. When their number is called, they will walk across, place their bean in the jar for the tribe they want, and stand with their tribemates. This year, our three tribes are Alamat," he pointed to the green mat, before shifting himself to point at the purple one. "Dangal, and Katapangan," he finished by finally pointing at the area decorated in orange.  
Jeff gave them a moment to digest that, and Felicity relaxed marginally. Her greatest fear in the last few days was that she would get separated from Oliver, that they would wind up in different tribes, and she wouldn't be able to be there for him; and she'd have to manage all the actual survival parts of the game on her own. She wasn't sure which of those two issues would be worse. With what Jeff had just described though, unless there were some further rules to how it worked, she and Oliver could easily join up.

"But there's more," Jeff said, instantly dashing her hopes. "If a survivor selects the tribe that has the least number of survivors, that tribe will get two extra beans. If they select the tribe that has the second least number of survivors, that tribe will receive one extra bean. And if they select the tribe with the most survivors, their tribe will have a bean taken away from them. If the two survivors from a pair go to the same tribe, their tribe will also lose a bean; but if they split up, each tribe they select will get one extra bean. After tribe selection is finished, all three tribes will be able to use those beans their tribe has earned in the first reward challenge."

That ... complicated things a little, for Felicity's math. Nothing seemed to be prohibiting her and Oliver from winding up in the same tribe, but if other groups were splitting up, it could make them targets. It would all come down to what numbers they drew, and what everyone else chose to do. Felicity and Oliver had been standing near the left edge of the crowd, where Jeff took the bag over to first, so they were the third and fourth people to draw. Felicity reached inside, but couldn't feel any difference between the 'beans' inside, and just selected one after a moment, pulling it out tightly grasped in her hand, while everyone else selected. When he reached the far end of the line, they were cleared to look at what number they had drawn. Oliver flipped his hand over first, and she saw 13 written on the back of it; apparently he was in the second half of the draft. Felicity flipped her hand over and opened it and saw 18 written on hers.

Dead last.

Another pause occurred while everyone reacted to the numbers they had picked, and then Jeff was calling out again. "Number one, select your tribe!"

Felicity watched as an elderly man, still in good shape but with grey hair that was cropped short, stepped forward. She noticed Oliver perk up as he walked across from the right side of the crowd where he had been standing to the left side behind Jeff, dropping his pebble inside the green jug for the first tribe. "Number one has selected Alamat!" Jeff shouted out. "As the tribe tied for last place, they will receive two extra beans!"

That was a wrinkle he had failed to mention before, that being tied for last would give you the last place reward. Felicity's forehead wrinkled in concentration, as she realized there was a loophole of some kind there, she just couldn't see what it was, and it was frustrating her.

"Number two, select your tribe!" Jeff shouted out, and a middle aged man walked over to the next mat, in purple. "Number two has selected Dangal!" Jeff shouted out. "As the tribe tied for last place, they will receive two extra beans!"

Felicity started to tune him out as he continued to repeat the same sentences, sometimes with slight variations, for every contestant. A small corner of her mind realized it was so that no matter how they edited the show, they would still have usable audio, but the greater part was focused on the loophole she was sure was there somehow.

The next few contestants selected their tribes in a fairly predictable fashion; up third was a girl about Felicity's age, who went over to the area marked in orange, filling out each tribe with one member. Then came a pair of younger guys, probably in their twenties as well, who went to orange and purple respectively. The sixth to select was an older woman, who walked up to the green mat, evening out the tribes to the same count once again. Jeff shouted out his usual spiel, before continuing. "As number six has selected the same tribe as her partner, their tribe loses one bean!"

One of the PAs who had been running back and forth with extra beans ran up to their jar, dropping two in since the tribe had had the least number of players, stepping back momentarily to let the cameras film it, then reached back in and pulled one out, before scurrying back out of their line of sight. The next two contestants were once again predictable, this time starting with going to the purple tribe, then over to the orange.

"Number nine, select your tribe!" Jeff shouted once again, and Felicity started to worry about his voice giving out before this was all over. She was already starting to tune things out when a middle aged man, probably in his late thirties or early forties, with slicked back hair walked forward with a swagger in his step that Felicity earmarked as trouble. He started crossing from where he had been on the far right of the group of players still to select, to the opposite side, where the pair of elderly players was standing on the green mat, where he would once again round out the player count for each group.

At the last second though, he veered to his right, slamming his bean in the orange jar, before standing with the three other guys in the middle tribe.

\---

_A middle aged man stands leaning against a tree, facing the camera. He is wearing dark colored slacks and a pale blue dress shirt with the top three buttons undone, revealing a light amount of hair on his upper chest. He has dark hair slicked straight back._

**Ben, 39**

**Talent Agent**

“Look, my choice was simple,” he says. “I could go with the tribe with the two geriatrics, who already teamed up, _and_ cost their tribe an advantage. Or I could go with one of the other tribes. Dangal has three strong looking guys already, I figure we can win challenges easily, especially when one of the other tribes has two old folks, and dominate right away, leaving us in a strong position before the merge.”

\---

  
"Number nine has selected Dangal!" Jeff shouted, his voice showing surprise for the first time they had been standing out here. "As the tribe tied for second place, they will only receive one extra bean!"

And there it was, the loophole Felicity hadn't seen before. Two tribes could race up the player count, each getting an extra bean with each player, as they kept tying each other for second place, while a third tribe sat understrength, and left weak to challenges. She was hopeful that no one else would see it, for the sake of the two players who were standing by themselves, clearly the oldest people in their group. Those hopes were dashed when the next contestant, a guy in his early twenties who looked like he would be more at home in a frat house than here, with his bulging muscles, brightly colored polo shirt and backwards baseball cap, went forward to the Katapangan group on the far end. Contestants eleven and twelve followed the lead of the last two, rounding out the purple and orange tribes at five each, while the elderly couple still stood by themselves.

"Number thirteen, select your tribe!" Jeff announced, and she saw Oliver start to stalk forward from next to her. He prowled across the clearing, his motions making Felicity think he was channeling his vigilante persona, and she was slightly concerned someone back home might realize how different he was acting to normal and put two and two together. He walked straight up to the green tribe, smashing his bean down into their jug, before joining the two older players on the green mat, turning around with a challenging expression on his face, crossing his arms and glaring at the other players. Felicity couldn't help the smile of pride that broke out across her face at his actions.

It didn't seem to make any difference to the rest of the players though, as the next two went to the orange and purple tribes, giving them both six players each, and only two other people standing next to Felicity. Well, at least the last two contestants both looked capable, and would help round things out with her and Oliver.

"Number sixteen, select your tribe!" Jeff said, and Felicity watched as a middle aged woman walked over to the middle tribe, hugging the man who had first disrupted the pattern of players to overbalance two of the tribes. Jeff's followup announcement stating that they were partners was no surprise to Felicity, the PA pulling a bean out of their jar for the first time. She may not have been surprised that they were partners, but her stomach did drop at her not putting together that nowhere in the rules did they limit the players on making tribes of even sizes.

\---

_A middle aged woman stands in a clearing, woods behind her. She is wearing dress pants and a bright purple blouse, with two strings loosely tying the front together at the top, showing a fair amount of skin on her upper chest in the cutout. Her shoulder length dirty blonde hair is left loose._

**Kate, 39**

**Talent Agent**

“One of the things you learn in my line of work is to pay attention to what people don't say,” she says, a smirk breaking out across her face. “And there wasn't anything in the rules that Jeff read us about making the tribes even. So naturally I chose to go to Dangal, where Ben already is, giving us a strong position in the tribe, in a tribe that already looks really strong for challenges.”

\---

  
Number seventeen, a woman with auburn hair who looked to be in her late twenties, walked over to the purple tribe, her motions screaming _cop_ to Felicity. Apparently her partner was there as well, as that tribe also lost a bean for the time, and, getting a closer look at him, Felicity thought they might be "partners" in the police sense.

\---

_A woman in her late twenties sits on a fallen log on a beach. Her jeans are visible as she has one foot resting on the log, pushing her knee up by her head. She is wearing a pale yellow military cut dress shirt unbuttoned over a black tank top. Her long dark red hair is tied in a braid down over her shoulder._

**Nancy, 27**

**Police Detective**

“I felt really badly for the first tribe,” she says, and then shrugs helplessly. “All other things being even, I would have gone over there. But my partner is in Katapangan, and we promised each other we would work together no matter what once the game started. I couldn't leave him just to try to make things more 'fair'.”

\---

  
"Number eighteen, select your tribe!" Jeff announced, and Felicity was already walking before he finished.

Her choice was easy; no choice at all, really. She had always chosen Oliver, not only since he had shown up in her backseat and revealed himself to her ( _and could her brain just_ not _with the worst ways to think things, just once_ ), but almost from the first moment they had met, accepting his blatant lies with a smirk and a head tilt, rather than calling him out on them.

She walked across the field, doing her best to imitate his movement, before daintily dropping her own bean in their jar, and leveling the rest of the players with a glare she hoped came close to the one she imagined Oliver used on the targets from the list, mirroring his pose with her arms crossed over her chest.  
She then turned around and was instantly hugged by the elderly woman. “I'm Adelaide,” she introduced herself, as Felicity returned the embrace, before she let go and then hugged Oliver. “And this is my husband, Asher.”

"I'm Felicity, and this is Oliver," she introduced them, before noting Oliver's discomfort. "He's not much of a hugger, though." Adelaide released him after Felicity finished speaking, and then Asher reached forward, Oliver matching his movement to shake his hand. _Boys_ , Felicity thought, and then hugged Asher after they let go. “Asher isn't much of a hugger either,” Adelaide said from behind her, a teasing lilt in her voice.

A member of the crew walked over with their buffs, and Felicity watched as Oliver placed his on the crown of his head like he was wearing a bandana, before her eyes widened in fear. She quickly reached over, slithering it down over his face to rest like a gaiter around his neck. He stared at her in confusion for a moment, and she realized she wouldn't be able to explain it to him even in whispers with how they were both surrounded by microphones. Instead, she placed her own over her face, reaching behind her to push her hair up under it the same way he had been wearing his. As she did so, he watched her closely, before his own eyes widened in recognition of how the color combined with the positioning she had chosen resembled his hood.

"Here, let me help you with that," he said, reaching over to her, his fingers grabbing the edges of the buff, but his thumbs tracing gently over her face, and she closed her eyes, content to let him position it however he wanted. He undid her work before placing it across her brow like a sweat band, tracing one hand behind her head to pop her ponytail over the top of it. "There, that looks a lot better."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bean Counts, per tribe:  
> Alamat (green): 10  
> Dangal (purple): 21  
> Katapangan (orange): 21
> 
> The three tribe names were selected in typical Survivor style, by selecting desirable traits, and translating those words into the native language (Filipino, in this case).  
> Alamat means "legend", Dangal means "honor", Katapangan means "courage", or so Google translate assures me.  
> Yes, this means Felicity and Oliver are now Legends. Two and a half years before Ray and Sara, even.


	4. Now We're In It (Day 1)

As they all walked across the field towards where they had been directed for the reward challenge, Felicity thought to herself. She hadn't spent much time thinking about the actual game part of this experience. At first, she had been focused on making sure that she and Oliver didn't leave any loose ends behind them in Starling City. In addition to her normal day job at Queen Consolidated, and their night work as vigilantes, she had also “helped” Oliver set up Verdant for reconstruction (well, she had ordered everything herself, and just used his signature to authorize things and his credit card to pay for them, but that was where they were at these days). And that was all just the work she had had to put into organizing their normal day to day lives. On top of that, she had coordinated with Diggle to watch over Thea, and make sure that nothing happened to her, which was high on her priority list given that the city still held a lot of animosity towards the Queen scions for the role their mother had taken in the Undertaking. And, however much she knew she was going to regret it, she had wound up calling her own mother to let her know where she was going to be and what she was going to be doing.

But all of that preparation, combined with the fact that she had only had a few days' notice that this was coming, she hadn't really had a chance to prepare for the game. Oh, she had packed and made sure she talked with Oliver about what she would need to bring, but mentally and strategically, she felt wholly unready. She had seen a few seasons previously, and loved watching Survivor when she could, but there had been many she hadn't seen, with how busy she was. Especially lately, considering how crazy her life had been in the last year.

She had obviously wanted to do well, wanted Oliver to do well, since the more time they spent out here, the more time he would have to heal. But seeing the way the other players had behaved at tribal selection had really made her mad. It chafed her sense of justice and fairness. This was exactly what she had gotten into Oliver's crusade for, the chance to make a difference, to help people, to provide assistance and justice where the law left off. After what had happened that morning, she no longer wanted to do well, she wanted to _win_.

As she continued to walk through the island with Oliver and dozens of other strangers, she thought about what she had seen of the game so far. The producers had made it clear in the contracts they had had to sign that the rules were inviolable, but the rules in that tribal selection had been very specific as well. There had been plenty of loopholes that were just sitting there, and the other players had taken advantage of them. First, by stacking two tribes to make the third into a sacrificial lamb, and then by going up to seven players, rather than evenly distributing among the three tribes.

As they walked, Felicity looked around her at the Survivor logo emblazoned on everything, from the buffs the survivors were all wearing, to what seemed like every piece of modern equipment. _Outwit, Outlast, Outplay_. That was the motto of the game, and the game was serious about it.

She and Oliver were already starting on the back foot with their tribe. She was glad they had done what they did, but it didn't change the calculus of determining who had a leg up to start. _Outplay_. That was the trick. The other tribes had taken advantage of the wording of the rules to screw over Adelaide and Asher. She and Oliver, and Adelaide and Asher, would have to take the same sort of advantage, find the same sort of loopholes, play the game the same way the other tribes had, if they were going to win.

She couldn't help thinking about the parallels with what they had left behind in Starling, with how their work as vigilantes went outside the law to help those who suffered because of criminals who took advantage of the law.

They had finally reached the area for the reward challenge, and she and the other contestants were hurried into three separate areas for their tribes, while the staff set up the cameras, and Jeff walked over to what was clearly going to be pivotal for this challenge.

It was impossible to tell what exactly it was, since it was covered in a tarp of some kind, but it was big; at least 8 or 10 feet tall, and about that wide as well. It didn't look too deep though, and there wasn't anything else in the area, so this wasn't going to be any kind of obstacle course.

“Normally,” Jeff said, drawing all their attention to him. “You all will go back to your tribes, and find some basic gear there to get you all started. But this time, we're doing things a little differently. Survivors, wanna see what you're playing for?”

A round of applause echoed from the contestants, and Jeff moved over to the tarp. “This time, all the equipment and food you're going to start with, you're going to have to buy. Welcome to the Survivor General Store.” Jeff pulled the tarp down from over the structure, revealing a stand covered in various pieces of equipment, each with a number written above it, with the Survivor logo plastered across the top bar of the stand. “As you can see, we have plenty of gear for you to start with; we have several machetes, some bags of rice, cooking gear, all the normal things you might find back at your camp in any other season. But we've also got some other small comforts, and a few more valuable items, and the big prize: flint. But this General Store only accepts one currency: the beans your tribe earned during tribal selection. Oh, and before I forget. What you see, is what you get; these items on display are the only items that will be available during this reward challenge. And each tribe will get to pick one item at a time they would like to purchase, starting with the tribe with the lowest numbered player.”

Felicity had been dead last to pick with the number eighteen, but her tribe also had within it the first person to pick overall, so they would have to choose first.

Felicity saw Oliver's brow furrow as he studied the board, and she grabbed his arm, tugging him in close as she turned to huddle together with the other half of their team. "Talk to me, Oliver, I don't know what we need. This isn't my area of expertise, this is your thing."

Oliver nodded, his eyes tracking everyone in the vicinity and pitching his voice low. "The problem is there's only the one flint, and there's nothing else up there that can start a fire. Without fire, we're in deep trouble, but ..."

Felicity's eyes flashed back to the board of prices, confirming what she had already known, that it was listed at ten beans. "But that flint costs everything we have, we couldn't afford anything else." She sighed. "Can't you start a fire without it?"

Oliver shook his head slightly. "I know it's possible, but I always had flint, or matches, or -," and his eyes bounced around again, the signal she had already learned meant it was something he wasn't comfortable saying where anyone might overhear, that what he was about to say could give away his secrets. "Or something I could use. I'm not sure how, and trying to figure out a way to do so would eat up a lot of time we should be using for building shelter, and other things."

Felicity turned to the other two members of her team. "Do either of you ...?" she trailed off, and was disappointed to see them both shake their heads.

"I've got plenty of experience maintaining fires for camping and survival, building them correctly, making sure they don't go out," Asher said. "But I'm in the same boat as Oliver, I'd need something to start it with."

"I know from watching past seasons," Adelaide continued. "That they don't just give fire away for nothing. You can get it from rewards, but that's what this is, and we might not win the next one. Other than that, you'll get fire when you get to tribal council, but that's not for another two days, and I'd rather our plan not rely on us having to vote someone out."

"Give me a second," Felicity said, and turned so that the sun was finally out of her eyes, facing away from the others, the little Tinkerbell spot from her glasses dancing among their shadows in front of her. She had barely thought for a moment, before her eyes widened with a sudden realization. She turned back around to the others. "I can do it," she whispered, leaning in. “I can start a fire for us, without having to buy anything.”

Oliver's eyes widened at her assertion, but he just nodded, taking her at her word.

"In that case, what should we buy instead?" Adelaide asked, and they all turned back around to the board.

"A machete, the cooking gear, rice, uhh, the rope," Oliver listed.

"That's only adding up to six total," Adelaide said. "What would we do with the rest?"

"Most important thing, Oliver," Felicity prompted, at his furrowed brow.

"The tarp," Asher answered for him.

Oliver nodded in agreement. "After everything else, that would be the best choice. But that's another six, and we couldn't afford it all."

Felicity thought about what she had been considering on their walk over, trying to find a solution. "What if we could?" she whispered, seeing a path.

"How?" Adelaide asked her, genuine curiosity on her face.

"We would need two more beans," Felicity said. "So we trade for them."

"For what? Not taking the flint?" Oliver shook his head. "They'd never go for it, there's no way they'll buy the bluff that we would take it and not even be able to afford rice or anything else."

"I was thinking more what you and Digg were talking about a few months back," Felicity answered, her mind already racing ahead. "'Future considerations'?"  
Oliver's and Asher's eyes both widened at the phrase, while Adelaide looked confused.

"It's from sports drafts," Asher explained to her, and Felicity and Oliver nodded. "Sometimes teams trade their draft spot for 'future considerations'."  
Adelaide's mouth opened in an 'o' of understanding. "So we trade first pick for the two beans we need?"

"It would have to be the orange team," Oliver elaborated, his eyes shifting up to stare over her head at nothing, the way he did when he was working through something. "Purple is up next, and would have no reason to trade us, when they know we're not gonna take the flint."

"Wouldn't the purple tribe just steal the tarp from us, though?" Adelaide asked. "They'd still be second pick."

"No," Asher answered, and Oliver nodded his head and continued the explanation. "They'd probably take that small fishing kit, it's the next most expensive choice."

“And we don't want that?” Felicity asked, her eyebrow raising as she asked it.

“I'm not as concerned about our ability to get food,” Oliver turned to face her, his eyes hooded and his voice dropping. “As I am about getting us shelter.”

"Alamat tribe, ready to make your choice?" Jeff shouted at them. Oliver looked at her, raised his eyebrow. Asher clapped her on the shoulder, and Adelaide nodded. Apparently, they were willing to let her take the lead on this one, since it was her idea.

"We are, Jeff," she said, stepping forward. "We'd like to propose a trade."

"Oh?" Jeff asked, surprise showing through his voice. "What sort of trade did you have in mind."

"We'd like to trade our first pick,” Felicity stated and paused for a moment. “To Katapangan," she finished, and every other contestant burst out in surprise.

"Let me get this straight," Jeff said. "Your tribe has the least number of players and the fewest beans. I think everyone here is willing to admit that your tribe looks like the weakest one right off the bat. And you're willing to give this one advantage you have away?"

"I didn't say we'd give it away," Felicity answered. "I said we'd trade it to them."

"What are you asking for them to trade you?" Jeff asked her back.

Felicity was about to answer, when Oliver tapped her on the arm and stepped forward. "Well, that depends on what they're willing to offer," he said, and drummed his fingers across the lip of their bean jar. Felicity flushed slightly, realizing he was trying to avoid lowballing them, or giving away just what they were hoping to buy by giving a specific number. It was times like this that she remembered he had spent his youth learning all about negotiation, and how to influence people as par for the course with his upbringing given his family's social status. She hadn't even considered the implications of just saying the number they needed until he had stepped in, saving her from a mistake she wasn't even aware she was about to make.

\---

_A young man is sitting on the sand, his legs bent and arms wrapped around his knees. He is wearing a pair of board shorts with a sunset pattern and a black polo shirt. He has an orange buff tied around his wrist like a bracelet._

**Stephen, 31**

**Engineer**

“We were sitting over in our huddle, trying to figure out what we want to buy,” he says. “And we're sitting there, talking in circles, maybe we should buy this, maybe we should buy that, because we all knew the only thing there we really wanted was the flint, but there was no way that we would get it. Alamat almost certainly wouldn't take it, since they wouldn't be able to afford anything else, but there was no way that Dangal wouldn't take it if they got the chance. So we're just standing there, trying to figure out what the next best choice is, when that girl from Alamat just drops a bombshell on us. No way we were gonna say no.”

\---

The other tribe huddled into a hurried conference, before finally one of them stepped forward. “We'll trade you three beans to swap spots,” he said. Felicity saw Oliver rake his eyes up and down the man, evaluating him. Felicity studied him as well, and realized that beneath his frat boy polo shirt and patterned board shorts, this guy had a keen mind – that he would think more similar to her than to Oliver. The way to appeal to this guy was with reason and logic, not emotion. She stepped forward, tapping the back of Oliver's arm to signal she was stepping in.

“Look, you're a smart guy,” she said. “We both know what you're going to take if you get to pick first, that your tribe is going to go straight for the flint. We both know what you want, and what you need, and that you can get all of it with sixteen beans, which means you have five you can afford to trade with us without ruining yourselves. We don't need all five of those. But we do need four.”

\---

_Once again, Ben stands in front of the confessional leaning against a tree, his purple buff covering his hair._

**Ben**

“It was a pretty good move, offering to trade their spot with orange,” he says. “I was actually kind of impressed at their tribe. For a minute, tops. Then that blonde just gets nervous and starts trying to play hardball and admits just how many beans they need to get everything they want, like a ditz. We're sitting over here, and we can do the math just as easily as anyone else, they're clearly angling to try to get their hands on those hooks and fishing line. Not like we weren't going to take them anyway, given that they're the clear next biggest prize up there, but the chance to screw them over for taking the flint away from us was just a nice bonus.”

\---

There was another brief huddle, before the spokesman for Katapangan finally stepped forward, and agreed to four.

“Just so everyone is on the same page,” Jeff announced from where he was now standing behind the shack. “The deal is for Katapangan to trade four beans to Alamat, and Alamat will swap places with Katapangan for the entire challenge. Is that understood?” At everyone's nods and sounds of agreement, he continued. “Alright then, Katapangan, hand over the beans, and it's now your turn to choose something from the store.”

A second member of their tribe, a brunette girl who looked to be in her late teens, reached into their jar, counted out four beans and jogged them over. She walked up to Oliver and held her hand out, waiting for him to put his hand under hers so he could take the beans from her. As she did so, she stared straight into his eyes, and Felicity felt a surge of irrational jealousy spike in her stomach. She didn't have any sort of claim on Oliver besides “friend” (and, if she was safely inside her mind where she couldn't be overheard, “partner in crime”), so it wasn't any business of hers who he flirted with. Or, more accurately, who flirted with him, because, while Oliver smiled back at the girl, she didn't think that he was attracted to her. She might be wrong, but she was pretty sure she wasn't. For some reason, her mind kept telling her she was seeing his Ollie persona surfacing, even though his smile seemed genuine enough.

\---

_A young brunette girl wearing a floral patterned blue sundress stands in front of the camera, an orange buff covering her hair like a bandanna, the shade of orange matching the precise color of the flowers on her dress._

**Ashley, 18**

**Student**

“Look, I know he's like, what, like a decade older than me?” she says, rolling her eyes. “And he's in a different tribe, and my dad is standing _right_ over there, plus there's that girl who came with him, I don't know what she is? She looks like his girlfriend, probably? So yeah, I wasn't assuming anything would happen between us. But on the other hand, no reason not to try and be friendly with people in other tribes now, in case they wind up making the merge and might be allies then. Plus, he's _Oliver freaking Queen_. Why _wouldn't_ I flirt with him if I get the chance?”

\---

The girl jogged back to her tribe, and Jeff called out again. "Now with the first pick, Katapangan tribe, ready to make your choice?"

“We'll take the flint,” the older man who made Felicity's instincts scream _cop_ said.

“Alright, that'll be ten beans,” Jeff said, reaching over to pull it down off the wall of the stand, while one of the guys on their tribe jogged across to trade the beans across the desk for the flint. He held his prize aloft before jogging back to his tribe, their shouts of encouragement and celebration deafening even from where Felicity was.

“Next up, Dangal tribe,” Jeff announced. “Ready to make your pick?”

It all came down to this. If Dangal believe their bluff, that they wanted to get the fishing gear, they could get the tarp free and clear, and after that, everything would be smooth sailing. All they really needed from this challenge besides that was the basics to build their camp and survive on, of which there were enough present that they were guaranteed to be able to get all of those items. Dangal took a minute to consult amongst themselves, arguing back and forth briefly, but without heat or vitriol, at least from the distance Felicity was at. Finally, yet another guy who looked like a frat bro stepped forward, and unlike the guy she had been talking to from the orange tribe, this guy definitely gave off that vibe as well. He walked up to Jeff before announcing his pick, and Felicity would have had her fingers crossed behind her back if her nails weren't biting into her palms instead, waiting to hear what they picked.

“We'll take the fishing kit, Jeff,” he said, setting eight beans down on the table.

Felicity couldn't stop the smirk from appearing on her face for a moment, only able to tamp it down a moment later after showing it to the world.


	5. Climbing Out From Under The Rocks (Days 1 and 2)

The hike that the map showed them to where their campsite was located wasn't especially far, but it had taken far longer to cover the distance than it normally would have for Oliver alone. In addition to the gear they had picked up that they had to carry, his three companions were all noticeably slower than he was, especially in the jungle terrain they now found themselves in. This latest delay was only adding to his frustration and exhaustion.

There were cameras everywhere, and they were simultaneously better and worse than the paparazzi he had gotten used to back home. At least these cameramen were discreet, not calling out obnoxious questions or getting in their way, but they were also always present, always on. He had gotten used to hiding behind the mask of his old playboy persona while in public since coming back, and had been wearing it all morning. Having to keep it up for the cameras was tiring, and while he hadn't been planning on wearing it the entire time he was here, having to adapt to this new environment, combined with the sheer number of people who had been present and the focus on everyone with the morning's activities, he had found himself defaulting to it.

But they had finally reached their destination, and could start setting up. It was an empty stretch of shoreline, only a green flag with their tribe's name present to indicate they had arrived at the correct location. They dumped all their personal possessions and rewards they had "won" in one pile.

"So what's first on the agenda?" Adelaide asked the group.

"Two things we need most," Asher answered her. "Fire and shelter." When the older man had been the first one to walk across and select a tribe, all eyes had been on him and Oliver had seen something in his gait that reminded him of Digg and other soldiers he had known and pegged him for a veteran. It had made him more disposed to choosing that tribe, rather than dealing with the younger people who had wound up in the other two groups. The way the tribes had wound up imbalanced had only cemented that desire. So far, he had continued to prove knowledgeable about survival, and Oliver was extremely grateful for that knowledge. With how few people they had, it would significantly improve their chances of surviving well.

"For both of those, we'll need wood, right," Felicity asked, and Oliver nodded his head.

"We'll need a lot," Oliver answered. "Both big lengths and also some smaller pieces, some leaves and things for kindling to get the fire started."

"Should we start gathering then?" Adelaide asked. "Since we've only got the one machete, I can get started on picking up loose branches and pieces for firewood."

"I guess I'll start on the kindling, and getting a fire started?" Felicity asked.

"Over here," Asher said, and used his foot to trace a circle in the sand near the edge of where it began to transition into dirt. "This is a nice open area for a fire pit, and it's right next to these trees we can use as anchors for the shelter."

"Line the outside with rocks," Oliver tag teamed the explanation. "Then dig it down a little bit, stack the kindling up next to the side. When you're ready to actually start the fire, let us know and we can transition it to something we can sustain."

"Alright then," Adelaide said. "Sounds like we've got a plan!"

As they moved into the woods, to start gathering materials, Oliver saw Felicity fidget nervously, and grabbed her arm before she could walk off.

“What's wrong?” Oliver asked her.

“I'm just -” she started to say. “What if I was wrong? What if I can't start a fire? Everything's riding on me, and what if I was wrong?”

“Felicity,” Oliver said, his voice soft. “I believe in you. Your judgement hasn't let me down yet. If you have a plan, it will work. And if it doesn't, we'll figure something else out. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said, her voice picking up resolve, and she walked off into the bush.

Lian Yu was a very different kind of island to where Oliver now found himself in the Philippines. It had been cold, a temperate woodland, whereas here the heat was oppressive and unending. There weren't land mines, mercenary death squads, magical artifacts, drug fields, and missile launchers either. But for all its differences, for the way the jungle here just seemed to breathe at a different rate, it was still the same. The wilderness surrounding him brought back all too many memories of his time in Purgatory. Felicity had been right, yet again. Here, the memories were all around him. If he had gone back to Lian Yu instead, they would have washed over him, he would have drowned in them. As it was, it was all he could do to keep them from overwhelming him.

Oliver busied himself physically, chopping down a large tree, the repetitive motion of hacking away at it with the machete tiring him out, allowing him to shut his mind off for a while, focus on the task in front of him. Finally, the tree fell, and Oliver lifted one end up to make dragging it back to their camp easier. Everyone else appeared to have been busy as well in his absence, as when he broke through the treeline back into their small camp, he saw the progress that had been made in the short time span he was gone. He lined the tree he had brought back with him up with the two others he had already cut, and then smiled gratefully up at Adelaide as she brought a coconut over to him.

“I found a couple of coconut trees that way,” she said and pointed along the shore, as she offered it out to him. “And Felicity found a fresh water source in the jungle that way. She brought some back with her, but Asher thought it was a good idea to stick with these until we could boil it first.”

“Good thinking,” Oliver told her, and laid the coconut down, before chopping the end off with the machete with a few quick hacks. He drank a portion before offering it back to Adelaide, who shook her head, before going to retrieve another one for herself.

Oliver's eyes traced over to Felicity, where she had built up the fire pit the way that they had recommended, a circle of stones surrounding a section dug out a few inches. She had a small pile of leaves in it, some of the more brown ones that had fallen off trees and were already withered. He watched as she took off her glasses, laying down on the sand and holding them up above the pile she had created, twisting them back and forth before freezing and holding them as still as she could. He walked over towards her, and, right as he reached her, saw a thin wisp of smoke trail up from the leaves.

“Hah!” Felicity shouted, and pumped her fist. “It worked!” She looked up at him, beaming. “When we were doing the challenge, I saw the little light spots from my glasses, and I thought using the lenses from them to focus the sunlight could start a fire, and it did!”

Oliver knelt down on the sand next to her, looking her straight in the eye. “I knew you could do it.”

She blushed, and looked away, and Oliver bent over the small spark, blowing on it, grabbing some of the nearby twigs she had gathered to feed it. He started to explain to her what he was doing as he went, and she placed her glasses back on her head, focusing on his words, seeming glad for the distraction.

By the time they had managed to construct the most basic of shelters, the sun was already going down in the sky, and the four of them gathered around the fire, where they had put a pot of water on to boil and cook some of the rice. When they finally separated it out to each of them, there was barely anything there.

“That's really it?” Felicity asked, just staring down at her bowl.

“Unfortunately,” Adelaide answered, a sour note in her own voice.

“We have to assume it's our only food source for now,” Asher chimed in. “So we have to make sure it lasts the entire time.”

“The game's thirty nine days long,” Adelaide picked up. “If we make it all the way to the last day, there's a special breakfast that morning. And assuming we make it to the merge, there's a feast when that happens as well. Other than that, no guarantees there will be anything else coming our way. Thirty seven days, times the four of us, we need to split the bag 148 ways.”

Oliver saw Felicity nod her head at the math. “Yeah, I knew it intellectually, but actually seeing it is an entirely different thing.” She looked back over at Oliver. “We need to do something about that tomorrow, right?”

Oliver nodded at her in response. “We should build out the shelter some more while we have a chance and the weather is still good, but that's definitely the next priority.”

“Good,” Felicity said, and started to dig in to her food. She turned to face the other couple. “So, what do you two do for a living?”

“Well, I'm retired now,” Asher answered. “But I was in the Marines for twenty years, and now I just do some woodworking with my free time.”

“Well, that's a lucky coincidence,” Oliver said, a wry smile on his lips.

“Isn't it just?” Asher asked, chuckling slightly.

Adelaide laughed lightly. “Well, I'm a professor at Caltech. Mathematics, actually.”

“Explains why that algebra before was so easy,” Felicity teased, and Adelaide laughed in response.

“I guess it does,” she answered. “What about you two?”

“Well, I'm in IT,” Felicity answered. “But I did get my masters from MIT, so I guess we're rivals, if you're repping the Beavers.”

“Really? What in?” Adelaide asked, her interest clearly piqued.

“Um, I have two of them actually,” Felicity said, a faint blush rising on her face. “Computer Science and Cybersecurity.”

“That's impressive,” Adelaide said, her tone clearly conveying the accomplishment that Felicity had achieved. “What about you, Oliver?”

“Uh,” Oliver said, stalling for time, while Felicity started cackling with laughter next to him.

\---

_A well muscled man with short cropped brown hair stands in front of the camera, hands in his pockets. He is wearing a dark long sleeved shirt, with a green buff around his neck, a somewhat self-effacing smile on his face._

**Oliver Queen**

**28**

**Nightclub Owner**

“Obviously people probably know I was on a deserted island for five years,” he says. “But I'm hoping that this will be an entirely different, more pleasant experience.”

\---

The sun rose on the second day, and Oliver stirred lightly from the half asleep state he had settled into. His time away had made him sleep lightly most of the time, and especially in any new environment he had trouble adjusting to the point where he even could. But while sleep had eluded him, he had been able to enter a meditative state that had been restful. He stood up and stretched, and then toed Felicity's leg, trying to wake her up.

“Mmm,” she mumbled. “Five more minutes.”

Oliver chuckled and walked off to relieve himself in the woods while she stirred there, making a mental note that they needed to dig a slit trench or a latrine going forward. When he returned, he took the pot and walked off to refill their water supply for drinking that morning. By the time he got back, the other three were gathered around the fire, warming up from the chill that had settled in overnight, finally replacing the heat of the day.

“Didn't realize it would get so cold,” Adelaide said, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. “Especially not with how hot it had been.”

“It's the ocean,” Asher explained. “Being so close to it, we're losing a lot of heat.”

“I see what you mean about building the shelter up, Oliver,” Adelaide said. “That and finding some food today then?”

“Yeah, I can go hunting,” Oliver answered. “If you all can work on the shelter, I should be able to find something for us today. Once I get a better look around the area, I can get a better idea of what we'll be able to find on a regular basis.”

"Well, that makes sense," Felicity nodded. "Letting the carpenter handle the building."

“I've got some ideas for constructing it,” Asher drawled out, a smirk on his face. “We'll probably need the machete, though.”

“That's fine,” Oliver said, and grabbed both it and a spare length of wood a few feet long. He quickly fashioned one end of his stick into a sharp point, before flipping the machete over and passing it hilt first to Asher. “I can make do.”

If the previous day had reminded him of Lian Yu, today he was surrounded by it. Stalking through the jungle, hunting for food, the sensations he was experiencing were so vivid. While there had been many days full of death and combat on the island, there had been far more just surviving, trying to stay hidden from whatever group of mercenaries was present then, scavenging for any supplies, hunting for food. Not all the days from his five years were the same, some weighed far more heavily on his mind than others, boulders upon his back, but even the lighter days, where things had been relatively good, there had been so many that the pebbles they were added up into an avalanche, an avalanche the past day had triggered into falling. Every tree he passed, every bush, every rock, was a reminder of some similar feature on Lian Yu. By the time he was ready to return back to the camp, it was overwhelming him.

He stumbled out of the trees, his footsteps whisper quiet, and the motion caught Felicity's eye, making her look over at him. Her face suddenly shifted, her eyes widening, and she crossed quickly over to him, holding her hands out in front of her, gently, as if he was some sort of animal she was afraid of spooking.

“Are you alright, Oliver?” she asked, and stretched her hand out to place it on his upper arm. He leaned into the touch, his eyes fluttering shut for a moment, as she grounded him out of his mind, pulling him back to the present.

“Yeah,” he finally spoke. “Just a long day.”

“Yeah,” she repeated back to him. “Let's sit down.” They both made their way over to the fire, her gently tugging on his arm with her hand, her touch featherlight. They sat there in silence for a few minutes, before she spoke again. “If you need to tell someone about your day, you can tell me.”

Oliver startled at her words, an echo of their conversation from months earlier, turning to stare at her, a small smile creeping onto his face, an echo of her knowing smile.

“Yeah,” he said, and felt the weight of the mountain that had fallen on him that day start to recede a little. The hardest part about Lian Yu had been how alone he was; even during the times when he had allies on the island, a part of him was still closed off from them, terrified about what might happen to any of them, how they could all die at any moment, how little he knew his companions, and the fear that they might betray him for their own survival or escape. Just having someone nearby he could truly trust made this experience so much different, made it so much more bearable, lightened the load that he was suffering under.

“For now though, let's work on preparing these,” he said, and tapped the two larger lizards he had managed to catch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Despite AO3 telling me it's 2021 already, there's still a few hours left in 2020 where I am, so I'm counting this chapter towards my word count for the year that's about to end. I see now that striving to get a chapter out every week was folly; I will certainly try for more regular chapter updates going forwards, but I can't make any guarantees as to when the next update will be. What I can say, is that this year has been, by an order of magnitude, my most productive year for fanfic ever. And also, that this story is definitely near the top of my list for projects I want to work on and complete. So, with any luck it won't be six months before the next update.
> 
> Also, I'd like to give a special shout out to Newsies73 who correctly guessed Felicity's firestarting plan in the comments to Chapter 4. Either I'm coming up with extremely cliche ideas, you've seen WAY too much of Survivor, or I am doing good at telegraphing my plans - I like to imagine it's the third option.


End file.
